


Names

by nataliaket



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 07:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8614387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nataliaket/pseuds/nataliaket
Summary: He wonders who he is, Percy or Percival





	

For the longest time he was lost, memories given up to the changing waves of time like those he’d seen during his time out on the ocean. When he starts to remember who and what he is, when he comes out of the fugue state he’s been in for who knows how long he can only think of the smoke that clouds his mind, egging him on for revenge.

_Focus on the List, find them and take them so our agreement can be met._

And so he ended up in a prison, caged. He had been so close, he had been within arms reach of her and yet he had failed. And yet when this strange group of people, _the SHITs, really?_ , comes and tells him he’s welcome to come along with them he sees a path out and for the first time the voice of the smoke recedes, drowned out by the cacophony of voices from all of them talking all their waking hours. He’s been alone for so long it’s strange and uncomfortable to be around other people all the time, they’re all so loud and everywhere and in his space all the time. He introduces himself as Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, feeling his spine straighten as the name rolls off a tongue that hasn’t tasted those words in years. He stumbles though, on the third of the House of Whitestone, because that is no longer true. Whitestone is dead, long buried and left to rot in the blood soaked snow and the pain and humiliation of torture. But then they all start calling him Percy and good gods it rakes on him, how demeaning, don’t they know who he is? No, because even he doesn’t know who he is. Because even as he said it in the cell, standing tall as his mother taught him years ago the name had sounded empty and hollow to his ears. He’s not sure who Percival even is anymore, let alone Percy. But, maybe he can find let himself find out. 

So he goes along with these people, going through the motions at first, but opening up at some point. It would be hard not to with these people, Vox Machina as they call themselves now that they’re ‘respectable’. And maybe it’s the fact that now they’re trying to be more than just a glorified group of mercenaries that Percy starts to take a good look at himself in the mirror. He knows that whoever he sees in the mirror will not be that bright eyed teenager whose only worry was whether or not he would ruin his latest project and have to start over to the jesting of his siblings. Sometimes he thinks about how he acted back then and wants to reach back in time and smack himself upside the head. If only he had known back then what hardship and pain was really like, he’d really had no idea.

So maybe it is that thought that drives him to head to the nearest marketplace in Westeruun to finally rid himself of his fraying armor and clothing. He pulls at the hair he’s let grow that gets into his eyes when he’s aiming, perhaps a haircut is in order too. His share from their latest job isn’t large but it is certainly enough to head to the finer end of the market. Tracing his hand over some of the better fabrics he thinks about some of the clothes his mother and sisters used to wear. That he used to wear, that Percival used to wear he corrects himself. Examining the memories of his family he finds that the whisper of shadow and pain is still there but for the first time he can turn them over in his mind with a certain detachment and find some happiness in them again.

But fine court clothes have no place in the life he leads now he thinks as he brushes stray white hairs off his shirt, fighting the urge to run both hands over freshly shorn sides. Watching years of growth float their way down as they were cut off had been more disturbing than he’d thought it would be, like losing an old friend in some strange way.

The blue coat he finds though, meets some aesthetic need in him as well as being one of the more sturdy things he’s found in his search. Pulling it on he finds himself braced against the slight chill in the air and pulls the furred edges of the collar a little closer for warmth. It’s comfortable and that is not a sensation he has been familiar with recently. 

Making his way back to where Vox Machina is staying he catches sight of himself in a window and has to stop and take a second glance at himself, not recognizing the person staring back. His face has narrowed out and he can see traces of his parents in his own expression. He knew that his body had changed as his lifestyle changed, honing itself to a hard life of travel and fighting, but to see the changes to his face is slightly startling. Pushing up his glasses, he runs a hand through his hair. The person staring back at him is not Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, but he thinks maybe who he needs to be right now is Percy. He’s not sure who Percy is though. 

He turns the name over in his mind, looking at it as he would his gun. There’s a strange comfort there he finds, like the worn grip of his pepperbox or a close fitting blue coat. He examines Percy and Percival, weighing them like mental scales, viewing the very different men attached to those names. As he does he thinks perhaps one is the name of a dead man, while the other is perhaps the name of one trying to live again. He cannot be Percival again, he realizes with a certain sadness, he left that name to die as Whitestone had died. Maybe he can claim that name again when needed, wear it like the mask he keeps tied at his side, let the ghost of Pervical rise out of the grave of his body. But the name given by these people, this family, perhaps Percy is who he has been all along.

Percy of Vox Machina.

And some time later when he finds himself with two families, one found and one just rediscovered, blue coat worn but lovingly repaired, he thinks again about names. And he thinks perhaps he has finally let go of the ghost of Percival, letting him go with all of the rest. But maybe Percival did not die with Whitestone. He lives as long as Whitestone lives and it does live again, just in a new and different form. It lives in himself and Cassandra, scarred and recovering, but whole. Whole in a different way than before, yes, but no less solid. And perhaps Percival has just always been a piece of Percy, remade through hardship into a name truly given and then earned.

_Percy of Vox Machina_


End file.
